More Glitches in the Matrix
by Miraculous5
Summary: Everyone's favorite (or at least mine) Caprice Henrich Lickbum III returns in full blazing glory. The first chapter is here too, so it'd be great if you'd read it!! 4TH CHAPTER UPLOADED!!
1. Lickbum's Quandary

Lickbum's Quandary  
  
Caprice Henrich Lickbum III had many problems. The foremost of these   
problems, and often most painful, was that he kept getting beaten up. He didn't   
know why people liked to single him out and then commence ravage him. Maybe   
it was because his first name was better suited for a girl or maybe it was that his   
last name was Lickbum. Lickbum, for Christ's sake. He'd found out very soon in   
life (but not soon enough, it would seem) that with a last name like Lickbum, you   
didn't last very long anywhere – especially if that anywhere included public   
schools.   
Some of the other guys at school with promiscuous appellations had   
adopted nicknames and were only really shamed when an ignorant substitute   
called out their humiliation in full. Some of them had made a joke of their names   
and got known for their sense of humor, some of them had become good in macho   
things like sports and so made up for their shortcomings. But Caprice had ignored   
the problem completely and, in doing so, had made it much worse.  
But even if he hadn't had a funny name, Caprice would defientely still have   
been shunned. He was a geek. Not just any geek but The Geek as far as any of his   
classmates were concerned. Not only could he recall the names and species of the   
entire Star Trek cast, but he also had a vast collection of black socks, reeked of   
bad hygene, and was skilled with computers. Quite skilled, actually, which would   
explain why he had picked the lock to the school computer lab at 12:03 Wednsday   
morning. He wasn't planning to steal a computer, he told the pircipal at a later   
date, he just sort of wound up needing it.  
The reason Caprice liked to use the school computers is that they couldn't   
be traced directly to him. And for the kind of hacking he was diong on them, it   
was a very good attribute indeed. But at 12:03 on Wednsday morning, Caprice   
wasn't hacking into a government mainframe or changing his grades – he was   
tracing a rumor. It had been a rumor that was less than a rumor, really. A whisper   
overheard by chance, an idea which glinted and darted but was never really heard   
or seen. It wasn't a rumor because it wasn't something you spoke of, lest it   
disappear on the tip of your tounge and it wasn't a rumor because every time you   
got a hint of what was going on, the whispers would stop and the scent would   
fade. It wasn't a rumor, it was a murmur And that murmur was The Matrix.  
"The Matrix." said a voice behind Caprice. In the movies, he would have spun   
around in his chair cooly (and he would have ahd a spinning chair instead of just a   
cheap school one) or arranged his face into an Oscar-winning inquisative look. But   
this wasn't the movies, this was a dorky little boy who smelled like overcooked   
broccoli hacking into things that weren't meant for his eyes.  
"Eep!" squeaked Caprice dived under the computer desk he was sitting at. While   
Caprice Lickbum was a very smart person, diving under his desk wasn't a very   
smart thing to do. The desk had obviously not been designed for diving and he   
managed to injury his head, cut his leg, kick over his chair, and become so   
entangled with wires that the computer toppled off of the desk and hit the floor   
with a satisfyingly gut-wrenching crash. Plus it was dark down there and Caprice   
couldn't see his assailant, not that he'd be any less scared if he could.  
He waited there, shivering in the cold and dusty enveloping darkness for   
quite some time until he realized that there was nobody else in the room. This led   
him to make two conclusions: either there had never been another individual there   
with him and the voice had been totally imagined, or that the other person was still   
there and was just a really quiet breather. Or maybe they were deviously holding   
their breath, just waiting for him to become less suspicious, come out from   
underneath the table, and commence to get his head blown off. That's what   
usually happened. Caprice knew because it occurred in about every action flick   
ever created, and he wasn't about to fall for it.  
There wasn't really another choice, however, because his legs were getting   
cramped and it was a little hard to breathe under the miniscule desk. Maybe he   
could take his assasin by surprise.   
"AAA!" he screamed, leaping awkwardly out from under the desk and holding his   
hands in the approved Jackie Chan kung-fu stance. But no one was there. The   
eerie glow from the streetlight outside turned the darkness of the computer room   
into a series of shadows, but still no one could be seen. What could be seen,   
however, was a very smashed, school-owned computer.   
"Oh, man…" he said, knowing it must be bad now, because now he was talking to   
himself, "Right, now if I can manage to get it home somehow, I can hide it in my   
closet until I can fix it. Or buy it." This plan sounded optimistic enough, until he   
stared down and viewed the extent of the damage. The monitor looked like it had   
been simultaneously involved in a nuclear blast and trampled by enraged zoo   
elephants. He hoisted the wreckage back onto the desk and surveyed it.  
"Geez, I'm fucked," he spoke to himself again while staring down the crushed   
monitor. Oddly enough, the computer seemed to be working despite it's recent   
maulings. To the left of the screen, in small white letters, read: "You are so   
fucked." Just like that. It was rather rude, Caprice thought. First mysterious voices,   
and now his computer was swearing at him. The computer was right, though.  
"Yes," he said, a little bemused, "I suppose I am."   
The cursor blinked sullenly for a second, then spelled out. "So am I."   
"Well, I should think so, I did drop you on the floor for a second, there. I'm   
surprised you're still working, to tell you the half of it."  
"Not the computer, you idiot. Me."Caprice nodded like he understood completely.  
"Ah," he said meaningfully, meaning nothing at all.  
"What you find is what you seek," the computer blinked dully, "Follow the   
orange armadillo." The screen flickered and died with a lonesome "Bloop" and   
Caprice arched a bewildered eyebrow.  
"Right. If anyone cares to know, I am officially insane," he said to himself. He   
searched around the room looking for a broom for a while until his cell phone rang   
urgently from his back pocket. Caprice thought about not answering it, just in case   
it was his dad realizing that his son wasn't in bed. But something made him   
answer it and so he picked up cautiously.  
"Hello?"  
"There's a broom in the closet to your left." It was the same voice that had   
frightened him before, but now it seemed as if he had almost expected hearing it.  
"Oh, right. Thanks."  
"Hurry up already, will ya? This leather is really chafing me."  
"What?" said Caprice, back to being confused. But the person on the other end   
had already hung up. Caprice was once again shocked at the rudeness of the world.  
He turned to his right, got the broom out of the closet, and swept up the broken   
monitor glass on the floor. There were still some bits and pieces left when he was   
done, but he really was trying to hurry, so Caprice picked up the monitor with   
some effort (watching Star Trek doesn't really tone the muscles) and hurried out   
the door and into the night.   



	2. Revenge of the Giant Robotic Spiders

CHAPTER TWO: REVENGE OF THE GIANT ROBOTIC SPIDERS  
  
Caprice ran more awkwardly than usual because the monitor was quite heavy, but no one was out to see him this late at night, so he ran faster and without self consciousness. He ran so fast, in fact, that he almost missed noticing the big-rig truck parked at the intersection. He waddled (which can be the only appropriate term for the infamous "geek walk") quickly past, scanning the words on the side of the truck, then waddled even more quickly back. On the side of the truck, there was a picture of a neon orange armadillo and, written in large block letters, the words "Orange Armadillo Delivery Service - Find what you're looking for". Caprice blinked and stared at it again.  
"Huh," he breathed, "Well I guess they're not really into the subtle approach." He knew what he should do. He should be running up behind the truck, sliding open the back door, slipping inside and doing it all without being noticed by the driver. But when you're 20 pounds overweight; so out of shape you can't touch your toes; carrying a large, broken monitor which will probably get you expelled from school; and have been having a really bad night, (to put it lightly) you don't really feel like dashing across an intersection and performing heroics better suited for someone wearing black leather.  
So Caprice started shambling half-heartedly across the road towards the truck, and then he started shambling a little faster. And quite soon, he found to his surprise that he was running faster than he ever had in his life. He jumped when he reached the truck and in one fluid movement which can only be described as a kickboxing pirouette, Caprice knocked the lock off the metal door on the back of the truck, pulled the door open with his foot, managed to roll perfectly along the floor so as not to injure himself, and spring back up again with his hands in fighting stance. He felt a great urge to mutter a wonderfully cynical one-liner and would have, too, if the truck hadn't started up. The force of the acceleration knocked him over and ruined the moment.  
"Damn it," he said to himself, instead, "I was almost feeling cool there, too." Since the spell of the moment was officially broken, Caprice finally looked around at his surroundings. He was in an even more complete darkness than he had been under the desk and now the computer wasn't even working to give him hints. Suddenly something flared towards the front of the truck and Caprice realized it was a fire... probably a match. He was right, but for some reason, the match was lighting much more than it should have and soon the whole back of the truck was illuminated quite well. But Caprice only noticing one thing now: there was a really hot chick in here with him, and she was looking at him. At him. And she looked interested! That, obviously, was a first for The Geek.  
"Hi," he said, not knowing what else to say and figuring "hi" was right for any occasion. Well not any occasion, hypothetically, you could be locked in you closet with a mob of rabid ferrets in which case hi wouldn't do you much -   
"Hello Sexmachine0441," said the amazingly hot chick. Sexmachine0441 was Caprice's hacker name (some people had chosen something snappy like Neo or Tank, but Caprice had decided to stick with the basics) and he felt unbelievably stupid having it revealed that he was quite obviously not a sex machine. Or any sort of machine, unless it was one that could down a whole bag of Fritos in half an hour.   
"You can call me Caprice. Caprice Henrich Lickbum III, that's my name," Caprice Henrich Lickbum III said and immediately felt infinitely stupider - no wonder he had so many problems, he was always creating new ones for himself.  
"I know," said the woman smoothly. Smoothly, thought the Sexmachine0441, that's a good word for her. She was the epitome of smooth. She gazed at him with a cool, smooth stare. She had on smooth black leather. Even her hair looked freshly oiled and smoothed.  
"My name is Trinity," said Trinity with little emotion, "and I have a problem." Caprice squinted in recognition of this statement. But it was usually himself who was saying it.  
"Really? Me too!" staring off well, he thought, let's see if I can hold it, "I mean I have problems, not that...uh.. my name is Trinity. My name is Caprice, you know. You do know! I just told you that! Heh heh..." he laughed nervously and wished he was dead. Trinity just leveled her stare and looked at him in what he took to be disgust.  
"So..." he tried again, "what seems to be the problem?" Trinity glanced down at the floor and then back up at him.  
"You, Caprice." Caprice grinned with pure delight, but then realized it was inappropriate and tried to hide it. He was her problem. That meant this incredibly hot chick had definitely been thinking about him (maybe in a bad way, but that doesn't matter. It's the thought that counts)... maybe she had even been watching him. Maybe with all that thinking and watching she had developed some sort of obsessive crush and would at any moment throw herself on him in an uncontrollable fit of lust. But probably not.  
"Me?" he managed to ask, between fantasies, "What have I done?" Trinity bit her lip for a second and seemed to be thinking.  
"Well," she said, "You've been poking around, for God sakes! Will you please stop? Please?! It's hard enough having to hide our presence from the agents without some little idiot high schooler hacking into our mainframe every thirty minutes!" By this time her fists were clenched, her eyes were strained, and she was in full tirade mode. Caprice hadn't noticed.  
"Agents? You mean they do exist?" Trinity glanced up at him with shark's eyes. "Do you exist?" she said wearily and collapsed into a leather chair which was conveniently right behind her. Caprice hadn't looked around before, he's been so focused on the woman, but the truck was well decorated and was way too swank to be a truck. Black leather arm chairs were comfortable situated so that a conversation may be held, there was a sleek black tv, a large a rather less sleek arsenal of guns, and a nondescript black telephone was on a modern table right next to Trinity. Which brought Caprice's gaze back to Trinity again, and the focus was once again regained.  
"Uh... I think so. Do I?" He asked, more interested in keeping her interested than getting an accurate response. She stared at him, seeming to be trying to decide something. You could see her mind working and finally it clicked.  
"In the most physical sense, but not in this world. You see, everything around you is really a Matrix, a computer programmed designed to keep us humans happy while giant robotic spiders feed off your energy." Trinity gave him "the stare" again, waiting for this to sink in.  
"Giant robotic spiders are feeding off me?" he repeated, a little shocked, "Cooooool..." he grinned again and thought about giant robotic spiders taking over the earth. Trinity rolled her eyes in a most un-Trinity like way.   
"I hate teenagers," she grumbled. She gave him another second to adjust to the new paradigm of reality the boy had been thrust into. "Well, I gotta go," she said, "Now that the giant spiders have taken over the earth, we have naked mud wrestling every day at 5, and I can't miss it." Caprice's eyes snapped back to her attention.  
"Really?!" he cried. No screeched. Screamed, possibly, if you can do that while jumping up and down.  
"No, I just said that to get your attention," Trinity replied smoothly, "Look, now that you know the whole truth about the Matrix, will you please stop trying to discover it all? Thanks, kid," she smiled at him a little, enjoying the jaw drop she got in return, picked up the phone and vanished.   
*  
Caprice Henrich Lickbum III woke up in bed. Granted, that's usually where he usually woke up, but he figured today would be different on account of... the woman, and the message, and the discovery. But then he realized where he was and that it had all been a dream and a great weight (an anvil of it, really) hit him. Suddenly, there was a pounding at the door.   
"Trinity..." he whispered and rushed to open it. But it wasn't the babe from last night, it was his father and he was fuming.  
"How do you explain this?!" the father said, holding up the mangled wreckage of the school computer. Caprice laughed aloud and closed the door.  
"I don't," he said, and went back to bed.  
  



	3. Two Left Legs

Two Left Legs

Two Left Legs

The left leg of Caprice's chair was broken and it was messing with his mind. The chair was one of those cheap metal ones that was meant to look classy, but everyone knew was only a price range away from the plastic ones that were used in the other classrooms. Sadly, all Caprice noticed was that it's back left leg was off balance and that got him wondering whether the leg was really off balance, or if it was the rest of the Matrix that was tilted instead. He thought about this, and giant robotic spiders, and hot chicks, and black leather that wasn't really real at all which meant that in reality that hot chicks in black leather were naked. He pondered the last observation so thoroughly that he started feeling dizzy and figured he should go sit down until he realized he was already sitting.

Caprice recalled from his distant world of black leather thoughts that he was sitting in the broken chair under a slight overhang outside the Principal's Classroom. The Principal's Office had been literally blown away in a suspicious explosion last year, but after some months of failing to find any possible culprits of bomb-setting, the administration had tried to save face by telling the word at large that the office must have mysteriously spontaneously combusted. Caprice therefore knew he was dealing with an idiot of a Principal. And he knew that an idiot is someone of whom you should be very, very afraid because they have the nasty habit of spontaneously combusting in an entirely different way than offices do. But Caprice wasn't afraid. Interested, maybe, but he hadn't been even vaguely fearful of anything since last night. He had reached a sort of Nerdvana, a completely apathetic approach to the world because he knew that somewhere – in some alternate reality of sorts – the world was being run by giant, robotic spiders that sucked the life out of people and the only hope for the survival of the human race were (seemingly) a bunch of hot chicks who were really good with computers and liked to perform naked mud wrestling at 5. These thoughts brought him inner peace in such large quantities that he had some excess peace to use on the outside.

An overweight woman who was clad in an ocean of khaki shorts opened the door of the classroom/office and poked her head out in his direction. 

"Mr. Lickbum? Please come inside now," the khaki clad behemoth recited. Caprice turned his head slowly towards the voice and raised his eyes in an intimidating way. At least it would have been intimidating if Caprice had looked more like Keanu Reeves and less like an undercooked French roll. Their pudgy eyes locked and Caprice glared in a subtle way which he thought would frighten the soccer mom with the obviously pure and cold intelligence which lay behind them. "I know," his eyes said, "I know about the Matrix."

"Get inside. Now." replied the woman, only she spoke out loud and with no subtlety at all. So Caprice hefted his flab as well as his pride and shambled into the classroom. It was one of those portables that's as telltale a sign of bad funding as is Buffy moving to UPN. Completely rectangular and with bland grey carpeting on the floor and walls, the room had gone the extra mile to seem unremarkable – a standing monument against creativity. There was only one desk and it was at the far back of the room, right in front of large and drably tinted picture window. From the door to the desk, Caprice had to run an invisible gauntlet as the room seemed to grow along with his guilt. He approached the principal's desk ill at ease after what seemed like a quick eternity of walking to his doom. Said principal was balding and his sharp, spindly body was hunched over his desk like some voracious hyena whipping out a memo on the carcass of a freshly killed zebra. Caprice furrowed his eyebrows and wondered where he got these odd and horrible similes.

The principal didn't stop writing but managed to look up at Caprice using only his eyebrows. 

"Ah, Caprice Henrich Lickbum III, is it? You've been busy, haven't you?" the Principal's voice sounded insidiously normal. As if, like the classroom, it was stretching itself to be grotesquely unmemorable.

"Hmm…" Caprice pondered the question, hoping he could draw out the time before he was expelled. He was certain he would be expelled, too, because he had read it in the Student Handbook. On lonely Saturday nights, Caprice would pull out his handbook and read it all again. He specifically recalled at this point the parts about destruction of school property, breaking and entering, illegal use of computers and their alarmingly similar connections with immediate and unquestionable expulsion. "Yes, I guess I have been pretty busy Mr…um… Sir."

"Well then, let's see: you broke into the computer lab and commenced to first destroy and then inexplicably steal one of our school owned computers. Has this ever happened before?" there was a vague silence filled by the scritchy sounds of memos being written too quickly. The principal had a habit of speaking only in rhetorical questions – hoping some naïve student would answer them and thereby declare his guilt.

"Er… well, no. Not exactly like this ever before. Nope. I didn't mean to steal it either, it just sort of came out that way. I wouldn't have ever stolen it if I hadn't broken it. Not that I meant to break it either! I mean – I – I…" at this point, Caprice the Geek would have traditionally either dissolved into tears or run from the room with a guilty expression flaring, but the Principal stopped him before he could do either. 

"Right, you say it's never happened before, then? Hmm… well since you have a clean record, I suppose I can let this one slide."

"What?"

"Let it slide, Lickbum," said the Principal and molded his eyebrows into a imprudently quizzical expression, "That seems to be fair… considering…" the sentence had been left hanging, as if Caprice was supposed to do the considering for himself but what he was considering couldn't possibly have been what the Principal was considering, considering of course.

"Er… thanks?" Caprice replied carefully, hoping to slip out of the room before the Matrix shifted and the office exploded again. He stood up from the cheap chair he had plopped himself in and had turned to leave when some sort of male intuition made him look back. There, in the window, was The Quite Attractive Trinity. She was looking at him in a most concerned way that would have been verging on fear, but since she was above the emotions of the Matrix, would never really get there. Trinity looked straight at him and then slowly swiveled her head and looked straight at The Principal. She then looked straight back at him and mouthed "Run". Caprice not only saw her mouth move, he heard the words in his head, drilling into his subconscious like an urgent message from his own brain. So he ran. Not out the door, that was too far away and this was too compelling of a message, but straight towards the window. 

Trinity smoothly somersaulted out of the way while Caprice body slammed straight into the window and regretted it the moment he hit the air outside the window. There was a horrible sickening silent second where the world seemed to slow down and, if a camera had been filming the scene, it would have swiveled around to get the full shot. the hidden layers of Caprice's flab came falling out, wobbling like fleshy jello and sending the shock waves of reverberation up and down his body. The broken safety glass seemed to hover in the air around him, catching the sun as the pieces sparkled with horrible premonitions. Then life caught up with him again, and so did the ground. He hit the asphalt like a beached whale dropped from a 747 and would have taken weeks to heave himself up again from the tragedy if Trinity hadn't swiftly scooped him up and out of the way of the falling glass. 

The glass crashed the ground followed a short breath later by leather patent shoes and the body above them. "Trinity." said the Principal, cracking his neck from side to side and speaking in an that eerie monotone, "How nice to see you." Trinity stared back at him with her cool blue eyes and spoke to Caprice in a cold, sad whisper, "He's an agent. Take this and run. Answer it and you'll be safe," Caprice looked at her with his little bewildered eyes, a bit disoriented still from the surprises he'd just experienced. "Er…" he replied. "Go! Now!" Caprice took one last look at her and one quick glance to size up his former principal gone Agent and ran with his geeky heart out. The phone rang mid-stride and he flipped it open, not slowing for a second to answer, but instead just holding it to his ear. And the next second, there was nothing.

If reviews are plentiful or especially desperate, I'll update next chap. soon. 


	4. Free Your Rind

Free Your Rind  
  
Maybe, he thought, maybe my life is flashing before my eyes only I haven't got anything to show for it, so there's nothing flashing instead. Maybe, he thought, maybe I'm in one of those hospital rooms like on tv and soon I'll slowly regain consciousness and my eyes will adjust to find that they're shining a bright light in my face for some inexplicable reason and the rhythmic "beep beep" of the Beeping Machine will lull me into the real world. But his eyes didn't adjust and he didn't slowly regain his lost senses, so Caprice Henrich Lickbum III thought again. Maybe, he thought, maybe I'm inside a giant Twinkie. His rotund eyes twinkled at this last possibility and the small, nerdy boy spent the next few minutes greedily trying to lick the air beside him - a most daunting task.  
So he didn't know where he was or why he was there or what he was doing on the inside of his favorite cream filled pastry - in fact, he only knew one thing for sure: everything around him was very, very white. This wasn't the kind of white that came out of whipped cream cans, nor was it the pasty sort of untanned white known to some as the "Alaskan Stomach". This was an infinite white. A perpetual sort of white that just kept going and going and going. It reminded Caprice of that white bunny with the batteries, only without the bunny or the batteries, just the white that never stopped.   
Lickbum stood in the white and waited. He knew something would happen soon enough - a message would flash past, his cell phone would ring... maybe Trinity would even kickflip her way into his life again. Or maybe, he thought, maybe I'm dead and this is what eternity looks like. His mind raced in a ponderous way for a minute or two and Lickbum glanced around with a shifty sort of caution to make sure no one was watching. Then with the elegance of a slowly beaching whale, Caprice ran as fast as he could away from where he stood and leaped into a grand pirouette. For one horribly graceful second, time slowed enough to count his flapping rolls and Caprice extended his fingers to obtain a few more nanometers*. He landed the move with surprising style, eyes closed and smiling delightedly. In his dweebilogical sort of way Caprice had calculated that, unless his parents had bought quite a large casket, he would be rather cramped if he were dead. Running would have been out of the question and pirouettes, of course, would never have been thought of. "Ha!" he said, placing his hands on his pear-shaped sides in a defiant way, "I'm not dead! Showed you who's boss, God!"  
Caprice celebrated his new found life by standing around some more. He scratched himself. He waited a while longer. He closed his eyes and thought about homemade cheese and mustard sandwiches. He thought about the way the sourdough bread was toasty brown and when he bit it, be edges would crinkle while his teeth sunk in. He pictured the warm mustard oozing slowly between the cracks in the toast, mingling with the aroma of crispy, fried cheese. Just when his thoughts were borderline kinky, Caprice opened an eye just to make sure no one was watching. But something was watching - a cheese and mustard sandwich was hovering right in front of him in a most disturbing way.  
Lickbum blinked slowly and stared at the levitating sandwich in viscous disbelief. It certainly was there, just lazing about in a nonchalant, sandwichy sort of way. "Maybe." said Caprice, because he was too busy with reality now to think, "maybe I should call the police. This looks like just the sort of thing they'd love to have a group of scientists probe and such." He thought a while longer, "Maybe I should donate it to science, instead of asking for child-frighteningly large amounts of money." Suddenly, his forehead wrinkled in an onslaught of new thoughts, "Maybe this is something even more amazing than just a sandwich! This could be the cure for cancer!" He smiled broadly, thinking about parades in his honor, awards in his honor, chicks in his honor. But after a while he got hungry and ate the sandwich. It was good.  
There wasn't must to look at in the fields of white now that the sandwich had passed on, so Caprice reverted to thinking. While most guys would have passed the time thinking about big motorcycles or hot chicks or hocking their next lougie or hot chicks on big motorcycles hocking prize-worthy lougies, Lickbum whiled away his time thinking about spheres. He'd always like spheres. Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head. Caprice cringed with giddy excitement and wondered if he'd have time to think about triangular prisms next.  
But anyway, he got to thinking about the perfect sphere. Faultlessly round and untouchably smooth, he imagined how it would feel, how it would look. In the midst of hid thoughts there was a vague popping sound just to the left of his right ear, so Caprice turned to find the cause. Slowly opening his eyes, he found himself staring directly at the perfect sphere of his dreams. It was, indeed, the perfect floating orb... it was just so... spherical. But Caprice didn't like it. Not one bit. The whole situation was disturbing the little geek more and more and very soon now he was going to throw a hissy fit. "What is this?!" he shrieked, "I think of something and it suddenly appears? Can I think about the Stay Puff Marshmallow man or would that be too much of a rip off?!" he grunted discontentedly and thrust his pudgy fingers other either arm, "Fine. Sphere? You're not a sphere, you're a...a ... a talking orange! And your name is even stupider than mine! You're a talking orange and your name is Hubert!"  
"Hi." said Hubert the Talking and Perfectly Spherical Orange.  
"Eeek!" squealed Caprice and looked for a chair to jump on. One appeared and he squealed louder.   
"Whoa, dude," spake the orange, "Free your rind." Hubert took his own advice and casually changed his color from orange to purple. The Orange then began to quietly ponder whether a purple orange was really an orange at all, or more of a plum. Meanwhile, Caprice broke out into sweaty hives and eventually lost consciousness - fainting into the white of the matrix.   



End file.
